In rural Nepal, tying micro hydropower plants to the main grid brings electricity for all

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Talti village in Dhading district in Nepal: A new micro hydropower plant has made it possible to open
an agro-processing plant. Credit: The World Bank
Fifteen years ago, I started a new job in the Sindhupalchowk district in Central Nepal. I was working in the rural energy development section of the District Development Committee and supervised technical support for micro hydropower plants (MHPs) in the area.

My job also entailed reaching out to local communities and ensuring they were deeply involved, from installation to maintenance, in bringing micro hydro to their villages.

During my time in Sindhupalchowk, I witnessed firsthand the dramatic and positive changes hydro-powered electricity brought to people’s lives: houses lit up, radio and television sets came to life, mobile phones were easier to use, schools could run computer classes, small-scale enterprises flourished, and shops stayed open longer and offered more products. Moreover, the newly generated power contributed to improving the working conditions of women employed in local agro-processing mills as mechanical automation replaced labour-intensive manual processing.

In places like Bhuktangle, Parbat and Righa, Baglung, detailed feasibility studies and construction of MHPs had already been completed when the grid was extended to these areas. As a result, more than 50% of existing customers switched from their MHP-generated electricity services and the ensuing lower electricity usage made it difficult to pay off the loan that was taken out for the building of the plant. Ten districts in 2010 showed similar patterns as about 11% of MHPs are now competing with the national grid.
The Syarebhumi micro hydro power plant in Nepal is one of the pilot projects for connection to the national grid.
Credit: The World Bank
The extension of the national grid to rural areas is extremely positive and welcome. But the NEA plans its grid extension on a yearly basis. This makes it difficult to predict when and where the extension will take place. Meanwhile, the AEPC supports MHPs assuming at least a 15-year operational lifecycle.

After going through the entire process of bringing MHPs to their villages, including taking loans and contributing to construction efforts, local communities must pay the price for redundant MHPs as they have wasted their resources and lost their investments. Moreover, a recent World Bank study report argues that delivering electricity through an MHP is more economical than through the NEA’s grid.

Clearly, the need of the hour is for NEA and AEPC to better coordinate their efforts and plan ahead accordingly. When extended to villages with MHPs, the grid can complement rather than replace micro hydropower plants as MHP electricity produced in excess can be rerouted into the grid itself.

This would benefit everyone and help alleviate -- to a certain extent -- the current power deficit in the country and generate income for rural areas.

Recently, many positive steps have been made toward that end. The AEPC has prepared standards and guidelines to better integrate micro hydropower and mini grids with the national grid.

The NEA in turn formed a technical peer review team, which concluded that the interconnection of MHPs and the micro hydro interconnected mini grid (MHIMG) is a small step forward, which will have a ripple effect on the rural electrification of Nepal.

The NEA board has also initiated further preparations for interconnection and agreed to interconnect Syaure Bhumi MHP in Nuwakot and Leguwa Khola MHP in Dhankuta.

Once completed, these pilot projects may pave the way for policies to help interconnect MHPs into the national grid. This will prevent MHPs from being abandoned or running at a loss, and allow them to help reduce load shedding.
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This will be a win-win situation for all.

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very interesting blog post - many thanks for posting. Interesting to note that in Australia there is growing discussion about contracting rather than expanding the national grid in some particularly remote areas that are very expensive to serve. While the choice between decentralised versus centralised electricity supply options is very context specific, it will be worth keeping track of distributed generation and end-use technology progress - decentralised options seem to be getting better faster than centralised ones.
Also, given the reliability challenges of the main grid in Nepal, I'd be interested to know if there are projects exploring opportunities for the mini-hydro schemes to be capable of both isolated as well as grid integrated operation.